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It’s a daunting prospect for any performer to wait for those first reviews. But Medicine Hat native MacKenzie Porter may have been more jittery than most as she waited for the first wave of response to the Season 4 opener of AMC’s epic railroad and nation-building western Hell on Wheels. These days, it tends to come from online commentators and tweeters, fans that can be decidedly rigid and possessive of their favourite shows and characters.

When asked to compare Calgary’s Wild West to the American south, Hell on Wheels star Anson Mount came up with a few colourful similarities. “We both listen to country music ... We both like guns and horses.”

Mad Men moves inexorably towards its midseason finale, darkness visible. The spring finale airs Sunday, May 25. There will be a break of at least several months before the final seven episodes of its seventh and last season air — but that hasn’t stopped Mad devotees from speculating about the finale and what those head-scratching teasers mean.

It was a steamy weekend last July when Hollywood producers and executives behind the FX series Fargo began a tour through Alberta in an old RV. At the time Alberta was neck-and-neck in Manitoba in the race to lure the high-profile TV production, a highly-anticipated reimagining of the classic 1996 dark comedy from the Coen Brothers that will air in Canada on FXX. But the province’s elements were not co-operating. At least not at first.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan sang. But these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

After years of discussions, false starts and studies, Calgary’s film industry will finally be getting a state-of-the-art studio of its own. Calgary Economic Development will oversee at $22.8-million film studio that is set to open in 2015, the provincial government announced Tuesday at a news conference at the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” Bob Dylan sang. But these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

It is easy to forget that streaming video dynamo Netflix started out as an experimental DVD mail rental service. Years later, Netflix eventually killed off the video rental business, burying bricks and mortar companies like Blockbuster as well as many neighbourhood video rental shops.

Change is good, they say. The Walking Dead - one of the strangest, most unlikely TV success stories since Breaking Bad proved a mainstream audience would embrace a dark parable about a methcooking chemistry teacher - will look very different when it returns Sunday.

“You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” as Dylan sang, but these days, a guide through the seemingly endless flurry of pop culture offerings is just what we need. With that in mind, here is what’s on the radar screen in TV, music and film for the coming week.

Call it the road-trip of horror. For fans of the genre, the prospect of cramming all 12 of the guests of the Calgary Horror Con into a van for a quick jaunt to check out the sights of Banff is irresistible.